Never Let You Go
by poppey
Summary: Set 4 years post DH preepilogue, so contains some spoilers. Basically tells the story of life after DH true to info Rowling has said in interviews apart from one thing. I love to read your reviews, good or bad so please review! :D
1. Chapter 1: Hermione

Chapter 1: Hermione

"Are you going to tell me what you did? Or am I going to have to ask her and get the version you don't want me to hear?"

"Why do you assume it was me?"

"Because in Ginny's world it's never her fault when she can get away with blaming it on you."

He chuckled slightly, "I got offered a job at the ministry."

"Harry! That's great news!"

"It's based in Egypt…"

"Ah…"

"Yeah. Exactly. She's furious because I even considered taking it. But right now I'm not sure we can afford not to. I mean we need food and clothes and Ginny's not going to be able to play what with the baby on the way…" His sentence trailed off and he looked up at me, a huge grin plastered across his face.

I leapt up and was promptly enveloped in a hug. "Harry…I can't believe it!" I looked over his shoulder to see Ron standing in the doorway, leaning against one side. "Did you know about this?!" I asked him through my grin. He nodded and as I broke away from the hug I lunged toward him, playfully punching his stomach. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Gin told me in confidence, between brother and sister." He stuck his tongue out at me, batting away my hand as I went in for a second jab.

"You couldn't even tell me? Your wife?!" I grinned and we kissed before turning around to face Harry who was ruffling his hair and coyly smiling at the two of us.

"Stealing my thunder much you two?"

"It's about time someone did, tip you right off your pedestal Potter." The hard feelings Ron had once harboured toward Harry and his celebrity status had lessened enough that the pair could joke about it, although the recognition Ron and I had both received for assisting Harry in defeating You-Know-Who had helped somewhat.

It has been nearly 4 years now, since that summer when Harry finally brought the Dark Lord down at school. We went back to Hogwarts the following year, to take our seventh year. All students had to retake the year that had been so heavily disrupted and so Hogwarts rebuilt itself with more dormitories in each house area to take the extra students.

"Where's Ginny?" I asked Harry and Ron, still beaming up at the pair of them.

"At The Burrow I think. She went to tell Mrs Weasley the news and to see how Teddy's getting on with the broom." Harry replied, "I was going to go with her, but then she went off in a huff with me and told me to stay at home and make myself useful." He didn't seem to be making himself much use, he'd been sat in our garden for the last hour or so, sulking and watching me plant seeds in the vegetable patch and Ron balance precariously on a ladder in the back upstairs bedroom as he painted the ceiling – the muggle way.

Teddy Lupin had lived at The Burrow ever since his Grandmother had passed away mid-way through our last year at Hogwarts. Harry was all ready to leave school to take care of him but Mrs Weasley insisted he finish his education properly and took Teddy in, I'd always thought she saw him as something of a replacement for Fred but they keep each other happy. Harry had given him his first broom a month or so ago, a present for his fourth birthday and we'd all been made to watch his progress whenever we visited. He would whiz around the orchard about 3 foot off the ground before forgetting how to stop and would fall off, landing in a whimpering heap with grazed knees and hands, his clothes grass stained. He would seek sympathy from whoever was willing to give it out before jumping straight back onto the broom and doing it all again. Harry encourages it; he can see a great flyer in Teddy and has dreams of him being a famous Quidditch player one day an idea that only fuels little Teddy's own desire for the sport.

"I'm going to pop down there – I'll talk her round Harry don't worry. You just go home and think of something to cheer her up a bit." Harry nodded and said a silent good bye to Ron, walking past me towards the door, "But Harry," I caught his arm before he got there, "Don't do anything too stupid."


	2. Chapter 2: Ron

Chapter 2: Ron

Part of me was thrilled to hear that my little sister was pregnant, but then part of me was concerned it was all too soon. I mean, on one hand it's about time there were some more little Weasleys running around to keep Victoire company and Hermione's all too focused on her career at the moment to even consider it, but on the other, Ginny's barely 21 and they haven't even been married for a year yet, plus, we won't be able to get our free tickets to see the Harpies play if Ginny's not in the team. They'll stop her playing as soon as they find out and Harry and I will have to find something else to do with our Saturdays.

I followed Hermione about half an hour after she'd left to The Burrow, thinking that would be enough time for Ginny to have told Mum about the impending arrival of her second grandchild and for all the mushy emotional stuff to be over and done with, I don't handle that too well. I walked around the back of the house and Mum spotted me through one of the kitchen windows, she was absolutely beaming as she oversaw the washing of the potatoes I presumed she was serving for tea. She gave me a little wave which I returned as I reached the back door and tripped over Teddy's abandoned wellies which lay across the door mat. I fell into the room, landing with a painful crack on the floor. I caught sight of my arm on the clock in the corner tick back onto The Burrow to join Ginny's, Mum's, Dad's, George's and the newer, shinier arm that Dad had added for Teddy. There had been much discussion upon our respective marriages as to whether or not Harry and Hermione should have their own arm on the clock too but Dad had only ever gotten around to making Teddy's, he'd become distracted by his obsession with muggle lawn mowers.

Mum pounced on me as I gathered myself together and kicked Teddy's boot of the end of my foot. Mum tutted, "I keep telling him to move them, I knew one of you was bound to trip over them." I was engulfed in one of my mother's hugs, which since Fred's death 4 years ago had become somewhat lingering as if she was holding onto us for dear life, not wanting to give us up. She ruffled my hair slightly, announcing, "You need a hair cut."

"I'll get right to it Mum." I replied, settling myself down at the table with my wife and my sister.

"Yes Ronald, shave it all off." George had walked in hearing our mother's comment. He patted my shoulder before settling down next to me. "Hiding is he?" George asked me, my face fell into what I believe was an expression of pure bemusement and confusion at his comment.

"What?"

"Harry. Is he hiding? Too scared to come near us after knocking our sister up?" I smirked; George earned identical scowls from Mum, Hermione and Ginny.

"No, he's gone home. Hiding from our dear little sister, trying to fix whatever he's done." I accepted the mug of tea Mum had shoved into my hand and searched the plate of biscuits on the table for one of my favourites, dunking it into my tea and biting the end off it.

"Ah well, it was about time we heard the pitter patter of tiny feet again…" George looked between me and Hermione, "I thought it was never going to happen." George had touched upon what had become something of a sore point between me and Hermione. I thought our house was a little too quiet, just me and her, growing up with 5 brothers had got me accustomed to noise at all hours of the night and the constant chatter around the dinner table. But Hermione, ever the only child basked in the peace and quiet. I had started off trying to be subtle, my painting of the back bedroom for instance, then one evening I'd just come out with it, but Hermione had spewed some stuff about us being too young, with so much more to do. She talked about children as if they were death in a sense, life and career ending. Even my offers to work from home on the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes administration seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.

"Don't push them George. When they're ready, it'll happen. Won't it?" We looked at each other; Hermione seemed to be wearing an expression showing her desire for the ground to swallow her up. "Well, I think this calls for a celebration." Mum turned and beamed at Ginny, "I'll invite your brothers round, Percy was due to pop round this weekend anyway and none of us have seen little Victoire in so long. Yes, dinner tonight, here all the Weasleys together again…"She paused and the same thought seemed to strike everyone in the room, we'd never be together again, not all of us, not without Fred. "Yes, would one of you apparate to Harry please, we need him to be here for the party, he and Ginny are after all the guests of honour."

I took that as my queue, I apparated into Harry and Ginny's front room and told him about Mum's plans for the evening.

"Has she forgiven me yet?"

"Who?" I asked, "Gin?" Harry nodded, gulping slightly as he did so, "Yeah, don't worry about her, Mum's got her so talked up about babies she couldn't not forgive you." Harry smiled as if to say thanks and seemed to prepare himself to apparate to the Burrow. I stopped him, "Fancy walking there? I could do with a proper chat, just me and you."

"Sure, why not." All four of us lived within a 15 minute walk of The Burrow, Ginny and Harry in the hills surrounding Ottery St. Catchpole, not far from the Lovegood's place while Hermione and I lived in the village itself, a little cottage on the square.

We walked half the way there in silence; we were both concentrating on avoiding the boggy bits of the fields, which had been flooded recently by the unseasonably wet weather. "Harry?" I asked as I picked my way through an area of knee high grass, trying my best to avoid the weeds, "What do you think to me maybe becoming an Auror?" Harry pulled a face that came only just short of gawping. "Thanks mate, thanks for the support."

"No, Ron, no it's not that I don't think you could – I know you could, you'd be great at it. I'm just surprised that you want to quit Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, that's all. I thought you and Hermione were settling down a bit – being an Auror's not the best way to do that."

"The Joke shop was always Fred and George's thing, I never really fit it, I feel like I'm just filling in for Fred, and I'm not him. I don't want that really, I've wanted to be an Auror or a Quidditch player forever, and since Gin's already done the second one that's out, but I can still give Auror a shot. Plus Hermione's not interested in any of that anyway, so what does it matter."

"But, I thought…you were painting the back room." Harry seemed confused, but seemed to be the first one to follow what I wanted.

"See! I knew somebody would get what I was hinting at…"


End file.
